Torn's Perspective
by Lachivo
Summary: Exploring the Jak universe in general, from the perspective of Torn as he shuffles over to Jak with yet another deadly job.


Rain was falling in torrents onto the streets of Haven, the run-down buildings huddling together under each other's roofs much like their inhabitants, who skittered around in the dark like dishevelled rats, their torn, beaten rags, as holed as the roofs, the only thing stopping them from being drenched to the bone. The air was cold, almost bitterly so compared to only a few years ago. A few years ago, the heavy smog would have kept the heat on the streets, preserving the warmth of the suns like a dark, choking blanket. But now the war factories had been shut down and the ruined eco plants with their pipelines, feeding the city large masses of nothing, stood as one of the only reminders of the rule of Praxis, and the city was facing one of its worst energy crises ever. It had lasted for almost a year already, and keeping the public energy grid online had been one of the first major issues that needed to be addressed after the eventual shutdown of the renegade KG war factory. The only viable solution had been to allow power into the city in intervals, each sector receiving a fair amount of the energy available. Vin had been invaluable in making those assessments, acting as a consult for Ashelin.

The title of Ashelin had been somewhat disputed after she had disbanded the city council and taken matters into her own hands, rebuilding the city step by step, giving little thought to who's well-connected toes she stepped on. There was a political uproar for a while about the royalty aiming to reclaim the throne, taking the freedom from the people with violence. Eventually, it was decided that a new city council was to be reinstated. The extent of their power, and the power of the royalty and nobility, was still being hotly debated.

A clasp of thunder drew Torn from his musings. He did not mind the rain, nor the cold. He was used to it by now. Rain, though, had been quite the novelty for Haven City, as the smog had always kept the brunt of it at bay and the thick walls kept the city sheltered from high winds. Now that neither was needed at quite the same scale, a full-blown thunderstorm was free to strike Haven every now and again, and it was something the citizens were still getting used to.

It had been tough years for the citizens of Haven, but things were finally starting to look up. Curfews were now lifted, and the inhabitants of Haven could, for the first time in many years, leave its walls unhindered. Some had taken this opportunity to leave for Kras City, its metropolitan lights and busy pace drawing the youth like firemoths. Many had been deterred by the rumours of the place, how crime was on every street and one could be attacked at any time. Under the iron-fisted rule of Praxis and the Krimzon Guard, street crime had been almost non-existent, and Haven was still new to this relatively minor, though very persistent threat. More still, though, were of an entirely different opinion: Haven City was their home, and they were not about to leave it, even if fear was still lingering at every step though its dark streets like a bad smell.

Even now, as he walked said streets, people exhibited signs of the baron's former rule. They shunned him, like they shunned each other and shunned the rain. Everyone hurried past everyone, nobody showed signs of weakness. No sudden movements, no eye contact. You saw nothing. These had been the unspoken rules of walking the Haven City streets, and the mentality persisted even after the fall of the barony. It probably would for at least a generation.

He sighed. It had not been long since, had he walked openly like this, he would have been shot and killed on sight. Now, every now and again he would greet one of the street guards. Their blue uniforms carried an almost unreal sheen in the wet city lights. He raised his hand at a passing patrol, who raised one back. The new uniforms were not too different from the old ones. Recycling had been the main objective back when it had first been instated, as their funding and resources were very, very slim back in war times. During the initial retake of the city, most were just original KG suits, salvaged, patched and painted blue. Now, though, they were newer and more refined. Though not altogether that different, there was one key difference that the new city council had insisted upon: every guard had his face exposed. See-through visors on all helmets and vehicles. They had been very persistent on that point. If you felt you had to hide your face to do your job, you had no place in the guard.

Everything was in order, for the first time in so long. Not the baron's order, but a voluntary, pleasant organization that people fell into like a reassuring routine. He found that this was something he had been missing. He was an ordered person. He liked system and control, and military efficiency had come very easily to him. The Krimzon Guard had not been an actual army for a long time by the end of the war, so they did not practise marching and rank-and-file the way a regular guard would. But they were militant. He had no illusions about this. It was part of the reason he had left.

The Guard ranks had started out as the baron's personal honour guard, the most die-hard loyalists, and then moved downwards in the ranks form there, to just the ones who were loyal to the monarchy and not the baron specifically. He had been one of these. It was social heritage mostly, and he knew that. His family had always been very loyal to the crown, and the Krimzon Guard had always been in the cards for him. Another part of the reason why he left.

His departure had been astoundingly uneventful – one day he had just upped and left his post. He had recently been promoted, and was put in office with a man called Arlic, a mean bastard who's job it was to head up the effort to make the streets safer. Arlic had been demoted after a younger, more political candidate had taken his place in the Office of Propagation with the idea of the street speakers.

Torn had been proud at first. He had started out as desk jockey, a nobody that had been called to the guard without further ado, and who was not expected to accomplish much. As it turned out, he would surprise them with his natural affinity for creativity and field leadership, even if his abilities never really came to bare. Other commanders had that job, and if he wanted to stay in his own job, with his head above water, he had to be diligent, quiet, and do what he was told.

He sighed. Thinking back, he was amazed that he had made it for so long. Day by day he watched the atrocities that Arlic orchestrated from his post in the office, and for the longest time, he did nothing to stop it. He had somehow convinced himself that it was just the way things were done, and that his superiors would surely know if they were doing something wrong. This illusion, like so many others, were to be ripped violently from him by the cold, polluted reality of Haven City.

Efforts were made to find him after he deserted, but after a while in the hectic and backstabbing bureaucracy of the Guard, nobody remembered him for long, quickly dismissing him as just another deserter. For a while he more or less aimlessly wandered the streets, quickly ending up in the same boat as the hobos and streetwalking scum that Arlic was so eager to eradicate. Resurfacing was not an option, as he knew nobody above ground who would welcome him, so he turned to establishing an existence in the bowels of the city slums, swiftly becoming an infamous and feared name. The underground had been fast to welcome his expertise at this point, and his military efficiency was invaluable to their efforts. At least, that was what the Shadow had said.

So he became coordinator for them, heading up their missions and recruiting new members to further their cause, and he turned out to be good at it. That's when he met Jak.

"How long are we supposed to be waiting anyway? Shouldn't he have been here by now?" a high-pitched and very annoyed voice whined.

"Weather's poor. Give him a minute" came the calm reply.

Torn half-smiled, crossing the street to meet the speakers under a protruding, sheltering roof. The wall was slightly slanted inwards, letting the short, dark figure and the speck of orange by his side wait in relative dryness. In spite of this, they were the only ones who stood there. No hobos, no beggars and no petty thugs were bold enough to seek shelter next to him. Everyone knew who he was.

Torn would go talk to them. He would tell them that he had a job for them, if they were ready. He knew that Jak was ready – he had never heard him say no to some action before. He would tell them that it was dangerous. Jak would be disappointed if it was not. It was sort of their pattern, and Torn had long since learned to enjoy it. Even now, when the mission was so shady that it could not be official, he knew he could count on Jak. The darker, the dirtier, the grittier and more life-threateningly violent, the better. It was like he thrived on it, as natural to him as breathing.

He pondered the character for a moment, out of sight in the dark, while trying to tune out Daxter's chatter. Jak was, in many ways, simple. He was motivated by anger, and kept it under reigns like a tethered beast. Sure, he always seemed calm enough, maybe a bit hot-headed, but Torn knew it took a lot out of him to eat his wrath in peacetime. At a time where there was no baron to fight, no enemy to outrun, no factories to tare down, he seemed restless. He had been almost a little too into the situation in Kras, his vindictive grins just a little too sincere. He did have an edge, as the dark eco in the cars basically fuelled him as much as the eco engines, but the fact that he was forced to fight had not seemed to bother him all that much.

Torn wondered briefly how much the dark eco and jail time had messed with his brain. A lot, considering some of the stories he had heard Kiera tell. He had trouble imagining the guy as the mute island kid with the happy smile that Kiera went on about. He had trouble imagining a genuine smile on the guy's libs, never mind seeing him as a beach-running country boy adopted by the local sage.

Wonder if he became more like that when he got a shot of light eco into his system, Torn thought.

How much of Jak was actually Jak, and how much was eco influencing his mind? That was one of the main points that had gotten him banished back in the day. A stupid argument, really; they had no clue if it influenced him at all. Nobody did. Jak was unique. The only data on him was reports from the field. He had once heard Jak describe the light and dark eco, and though no good with words, he had said something that Torn could not get out of his head: he had said that light came from the outside in. Dark came from the inside out. Made sense, all things considered. It was probably the deepest, vaguest thing Jak had ever said.

Lack of data bothered Torn, no matter what he dealt with, and Jak had proven impossible to study. Every time someone had come near him with a question, he had dismissed them, and actual physical exams were never even suggested. It was suggested once, though, by a physician from Kras, who had yet to learn enough about Jak to take the stories about him seriously. He had arranged a personal meeting with him, and had, with the smug arrogance of a successful scientist, started to list a variety of medical experiments that he planned to have him undergo, from full physical exams to minor exploratory surgery. The physician never returned to Haven, and the matter was not brought up again.

All this had added to his mystery, and of course fed the council more ammunition for his exile. It seemed logical at the time, from their point of view.

Torn had shouted himself to a soar throat in the courtroom back then. Jak was their ace. He was loyal and deadly. They argued that he was a loose cannon that they had little to no control over, and that he could take them all on if he found some reason to, but Torn had been persistent: the rank-and-file of normal warriors were training wheels, he had explained; it helped the soldiers focus and built their loyalties strong, and it made sure that healthy habits were on their backbone should they have to fall back on them in a pressed situation. But Jak did not need training wheels. He was plenty stubborn to stay focused, he took on suicide missions at the slightest provocation, and he came back alive every time, practically begging for more. He did not need any help, had no need for a team or an army. Exactly, they had argued: he was a one-man guerilla war. Who was to say that he would always be on their side? Who was to say that if he, for some reason, found the actions of the new government to be disagreeable, he would not turn on them in an instant?

Torn had no reply to that one. He still did not. The best he could come up with was "he wouldn't do that." In many ways, they had been right: Jak was a one man operation that could take on anything.

Strictly speaking, he needed nobody.

Except for maybe Daxter.

It took a marvel of self restraint from Torn not to throttle the ottsel from time to time, but Jak somehow just accepted him. Torn figured it was a remnant from when Jak did not talk at all, and Daxter had to word every other thing the kid had been thinking. Jak still did not waste time on idle chatter if he could help it, so Daxter still yapped for two.

There was a kind of communication between the two of them that Torn had never seen between anyone else: if Daxter were to swan dive off Jak's shoulder, Jak would catch him without even looking up. When Jak reached back, whatever he was looking for would quickly be stuck in his hand without either of them skipping a beat or saying a word. It was as if at least half of their attention was constantly on the other. If half his soldiers worked together that well, he could have taken Kor alone.

Lately though, their bond had slacked a little; they were not as close as they had been during the overthrow of Praxis, but somehow he thought that was only healthy. At the time, the way he figured it, Daxter was the only thing keeping Jak somewhat sane, but after his trip to the Wasteland he seemed much more stable and collected (even a bit more talkative), and Daxter could afford to occasionally leave his friends shoulder.

He figured Tess had something to do with it as well. Now that Jak was not the only person in the world who put up with him, Daxter was spending much more time away from his companion and vice versa. Jak was still doing shady jobs for the old underground, whenever he was not racing or getting his daily dose of explosions some other way. Daxter was somewhat more settled in at the Naughty Ottsel, which was quickly growing to be quite the attraction due to its rich history and special clientèle. Every old underground supporter and would-be protester against the rule of Praxis was amassed in the bar every other night to talk about freedom, politics, what they would do to the baron if they had him, and just generally get their drink on. Daxter, of course, kept himself busy with storytelling and entertainment of various kinds. Whenever he was in, he would whip up a party like there was no tomorrow, getting the crowd roaring with laughter or yelling political ballads against the nobility that had been banned during Praxis, and keenly extracting entertainment from his patrons as well, their tongues severely loosened by large amounts of booze.

He deserved it for helping Jak. Which somehow made the fuzzball even more infuriating.

He sighed, dismissing his thoughts and focusing on the matter at hand. The short man under the roof had heard it, but did not turn. Torn smiled. Let the game begin.

"Hey Jak"


End file.
